The apartment remained silent after the battle.
Broken glass covered the floor.
Black ash from the corrupted creature slowly disappeared into the air.
And at the center of the room— a glowing purple crystal rested quietly in Suho’s hand.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Shadow Energy Crystal Acquired━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Jinho stared at it nervously.
“…That thing attacked you specifically.”
Suho nodded slowly.
The creature’s final words echoed inside his mind again.
“The King’s Fragment has awakened…”
Whatever the fragment inside him was… other beings could sense it now.
And that was dangerous.
Very dangerous.
Then—
DING.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Mission Update]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━First Corrupted Entity EliminatedBonus Reward Available━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Suho blinked.
“…Bonus reward?”
The system expanded automatically.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[First Kill Bonus Granted]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Rewards:
+5 Stat Points Minor Recovery Potion Shadow Storage Unlocked
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His eyes widened.
“Shadow storage?”
Another interface opened instantly.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Shadow Storage: 3 SlotsStored Shadows:
Shadow Soldier Elite Guardian Shadow Wolf
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jinho noticed Suho staring blankly again.
“That system thing appeared?”
Suho looked at him sharply.
“…You believe me now?”
Jinho pointed toward the destroyed wall.
“A black wolf literally came out of your shadow.”
“…Fair point.”
For a moment, silence filled the apartment.
Then Jinho spoke quietly.
“Suho…”
“…what exactly are you becoming?”
Suho didn’t answer.
The weak E-rank hunter from before was disappearing little by little.
Something else was replacing him.
Something darker.
Suddenly—
BEEP.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Urgent Association Notice]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Jinho’s phone vibrated loudly.
He checked the message and immediately frowned.
“…Another gate appeared.”
Suho looked up.
“Where?”
“Near the eastern district.”
Jinho’s expression became serious.
“But this one’s weird.”
“Multiple hunters already disappeared inside.”
Suho’s instincts immediately reacted.
Something felt wrong again.
Just like the double dungeon.
Then— the system flickered.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[New Quest Available]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Investigate Corrupted Gate━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Reward: Skill AdvancementFailure: Unknown Consequences━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Suho sighed quietly.
“Of course…”
Jinho looked confused.
“What?”
“…Nothing.”
The system wasn’t giving him choices anymore.
It was pushing him forward.
Toward danger.
Toward evolution.
A few hours later— night covered Seoul once again.
Police barricades surrounded the newly appeared gate.
Association vehicles filled the streets.
Hunters gathered nervously nearby.
Unlike normal gates… this one emitted dark purple energy instead of blue.
The atmosphere felt corrupted.
Unstable.
Dangerous.
Suho and Jinho arrived quietly near the scene.
Several hunters immediately recognized Suho.
“Isn’t that the survivor from the double dungeon?”
“But his mana feels different now…”
Whispers spread quickly.
Suho ignored them.
His eyes remained locked on the gate.
The moment he looked at it— the system reacted violently.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[Corrupted Energy Detected]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A cold chill ran through his body.
Then suddenly— the purple crystal inside his pocket began glowing.
The gate responded.
BOOOOOOM!!
Dark energy exploded outward.
Hunters stepped back immediately.
“What the hell?!”
The gate started shaking violently.
And then— something stepped out.
Silence filled the street instantly.
A tall humanoid creature slowly emerged from the corrupted gate.
Its body was covered in black armor-like skin.
Purple veins pulsed beneath it.
And its glowing eyes locked directly onto Suho.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Corrupted Knight DetectedThreat Level: HIGH━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The creature tilted its head slightly.
Then spoke with a distorted voice.
“…Successor…”
Every hunter nearby froze.
“W-What did it say?”
The corrupted knight slowly raised its sword.
Dark energy spread across the entire street.
Then— it pointed directly at Suho.
“…Return the fragment.”
BOOOOOOM!!
The knight charged instantly.
Faster than anyone could react.
Suho’s eyes widened.
“MOVE!!”
The battle exploded across the city street.
TO BE CONTINUED….!!
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